Barcelona-based Global Correspondent Honorata Grzesikowska

Introducing our Barcelona-based Global Correspondent Honorata Grzesikowska!

Here at Pedestrian Space we recently launched a Global Walkability Correspondents Network, as a way to build solidarity among walkability advocates around the world and continue to create media on sustainable mobility and urbanism.

We are grateful to welcome Honorata as a Global Correspondent to our growing network of individuals who are passionate walkability advocates.

I live in Barcelona, the city where Ildefons Cerda invented the science of ‘urbanization’; a city with a remarkable history of rebirth and transformation and a comprehensive current urban plan that will reclaim more than half the streets now devoted to cars for mixed-use public spaces, or “superblocks.”

Honorata Grzesikowska

WHO

I am an urban designer, architect, and researcher, born in Poland, and currently based in Barcelona. During the last 10 years, I have gained professional experience in renowned urban design offices in Rotterdam, London, Barcelona, and Shenzhen. As Director of Guallart Architects, I am continuously working with different teams of architects and urbanists on international projects and competitions in the field of urban planning, architecture, and landscape design, around the world.

WHERE

I live in Barcelona, the city where Ildefons Cerda invented the science of ‘urbanization’; a city with a remarkable history of rebirth and transformation and a comprehensive current urban plan that will reclaim more than half the streets now devoted to cars for mixed-use public spaces, or “superblocks.” It literally is a CITY to learn from.

On the other hand, most of my designing time happens in China. This is where I design new and regenerate existing neighborhoods and cities, working in different scales on creating self-sufficient habitats.

My knowledge related to lived experience, however, is based on the fact that I used to live in the Netherlands, where I spent many years riding a bike every day in Rotterdam, where walkability really means ‘cyclability’, deepening my understanding of urbanism. Adding to that my upbringing in post-soviet Poland, it is a quite explosive mixture.

Now, most of us are urbanitarians, because most of us live in cities. Therefore, we should be aware of what urban space is, what ‘creating places’ is and that the streets are our shared guest room, not a large parking lot.

Honorata Grzesikowska

WHY WALKABILITY

I feel that I am on a mission. After years of gaining considerable knowledge, it is my time to become a mentor ‘in all things urban’ for future generations.

Frederick James Osborn – urban planner and leader of the “garden cities” concept – called the people who lived in densely populated, industrial, polluted cities, “Urbanitarians”. It was so colloquial and insulting. Now, most of us are urbanitarians, because most of us live in cities. Therefore, we should be aware of what urban space is, what ‘creating places‘ is and that the streets are our shared guest room, not a large parking lot.

I feel that I am on a mission. After years of gaining considerable knowledge, it is my time to become a mentor ‘in all things urban’ for future generations.

Honorata Grzesikowska

Town planning is a universal example of multidisciplinary work that combines engineering, law, philosophy, geography, biology, and economics into a single whole. I will never get bored of town planning and its challenges.

Learn more about the Global Walkability Correspondents Network here